Department of Health and Social Care – Equity in medical devices: independent review call for evidence (closes on 6 October 2022)

Summary

The UK Department of Health and Social Care has launched a call for evidence to gather insights from experts and organisations on the potential racial and gender bias of medical devices. The call for evidence will be open for 8 weeks and will close on Thursday 6 October 2022 at 11:45pm.

Content

The review panel welcomes any data and evidence, including preliminary evidence but also information on ongoing data collection and research or evaluation projects, regarding existing equity concerns or biases with respect to ethnicity or other socio-demographic characteristics, and any mitigating solutions. This could include:

•  data and evidence related to ethnic and other unfair biases in relation to the development and use of medical devices
• examples of effective, successful or evidence-based approaches currently in use to mitigate these types of unfair biases and risks
• suggestions and ideas for potential approaches to improving equity in the use of medical devices.

 They state that while they welcome input from all interested parties, they would expect these topics to be of particular interest and relevance to members of the following groups:

 organisations representing diverse communities and patient groups, including charities

• community leaders
• academia, research, think tank and funding institutions
• clinicians and other healthcare professionals
• NHS and health improvement organisations
• industry, including medical device developers, manufacturers and innovators,
• device regulators and standard setters, including legal teams.